Classroom project webshop software

Preselected candidate solutions for building for free your own webshop

• You may propose something else
• You have to decide yourself which one you will use.
• It's not a matter of picking "the best one". Be accurate in registering the stengths and weaknesses.

Classroom project candidate webshops

The e-webshop’s proposed here are candidates you can use for your class-project.

They have NOT been selected because they are the greatest e-commerce applications. If going for a real project later on, you will have to use other criteria then the ones we used here – which are pure practical considerations to let it work at no cost and without ICT team support in a class context.

• A ‘free’ version should be available. Free is actually never free...in case you would want to use this later on professionally
• Public cloud flavor: we don’t want to bother with server infrastructure, hosting e-commerce software, managing webservers – so only a ready for use solution is an option – a one stop solution.
• No ICT skills required. It should not be necessary to have HTML / CSS knowledge to build the e-webshop

www.jimdo.com
+ very easy to use
+ excellent online store
+ wide choice of designs
+ comes with a domain name and email address

www.weebly.com
+ flexible
+ good blog feature
+ pricing
+ assign different access levels for editors

www.webs.com
+ great number of features
+ modern designs
+ very flexible
- cluttered backend

www.yola.com
+ easy to use
+ great support
+ excellent e-commerce
- Yola ad in Bronze plan

www.webnode.com
+ suited for larger (multilingual) websites
+ range of professional features
+ great for SEO
- designs

www.wix.com
+ impressive-looking designs
+ add animation and multimedia
+ HTML5 based in the latest version, so tablet/smartphone ready
- relatively pricy

www.shoply.com
-Not a general purpose website builder, but dedicated webshop
+Integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
+Seller dashboard
+Marketing tools

https://biedmeerwebwinkels.nl/
+Multilingual support
+backend integration
+marketing tools
+ -  Focus on Dutch speaking market

https://www.payvment.com/
+ e-commerce on FaceBook
+ analytics
 

Scoring a provider

Scoring a provider is about scoring the product, its price, and the service you can get.

The product

Technology

• Underlying technology (Open source, proprietary, market share)
• Uses HTML5, CSS3, JS standards ?
• Responsive webdesign (adapts to small screens such as smartphone)
• Database driven ?
• Supports dynamic product/page creation ?
• Template driven
• Integration capabilities (API’s, XML, custom, of the shelve components)

Internet marketing

• Level of  SEO en SEA support
• Social media integration
• Linking your own domain, linking into your existing website ?
• Affiliate tracking (e.g. traffic coming from publicity on affiliate website to your webshop)
• Coupon codes
• E-mail marketing integration
• Product reviews

International

• Multi currency ?
• Multiple payment processors – also the local ones !
• Multi language (easy of running your webshop in multiple languages)

Back-end integration & modules

• Role based backoffice
• Order management & editing
• Inventory tracking
• Accounting
• Transportation
• Shipping integration

Functionality

• Flexibility
• User registration
• Automated user interaction & follow up
• Returns
• Product options

Reporting capabilities

• Sales reporting
• Web Analytics

The price

• Monthly fee ? (many have a free version, with more feature rich paid versions)
• Transaction fee ? (some will charge a fee on each transaction
• Data fee ? (some will charge if the amount of traffic to your website exceed data volume thresholds)
• Support contract ?
• Consultancy rate ?
• Change management rate ?

The service

More important then functionality !
 

The Service:

SLA (service level agreement) = contractual  clause between the service provider and service recipient about the quality of the service
Contains formulations on response time in case of incidents & problems, downtime, backup quality, etc...

Examples:

• <= 4 hours downtime / month
• 4 hours response time for a priority 1 incident, 24x7
• 8 hours response time for a priority 2 incident, 8x5
• Max data loss <24 hours
• Change request lead time: 3 working days
• Escalation channels

Service capabilities

1. Technical service desk ?
2. Training & consultancy ?
3. Project support ?
4. Ongoing support & maintenance ?
5. Local presence ?